u/Theodore_Dudenheim

Characters that are extremely dangerous and can use lethal force, but willingly choose not to, and not because they follow a moral code that takes "good and evil" as a consideration. Killing is not out of their reach, but it's not their first option.

• Garrett (Thief): Garrett is a former member of the Order of the Keepers, skilled scholars dedicated to maintain balance in the world from the shadows, but he looks only after himself. He makes a living out of stealing valuables from anywhere his fence tells him there's loot at or does jobs for other patrons, like breaking people out of imprisonment. Since his only goal is to get the gold and jewelry, he doesn't get his hand dirty with human blood doing a messy half-assed work, as he says "killing is the mark of an amateur". He is a professional thief, an undetectable intruder, to him killing guards is for filthy casuals.
• The Mighty Monarch (Venture Bros): In the Venture Bros world, feuds between "heroes and villains" (or "protagonists and antagonists") are considered a career path and a scheduled job, for some reason. People can dedicate their lives to hating another person and annoying them through Saturday-morning-cartoon schemes, but it's a highly regulated industry that sets a lot of rules for its participants (Guild of Calamitous Intent for villains and O.S.I. for heroes), one is respecting a numeric level system that prevents stronger heroes from killing lesser villains and viceversa, and breaking that rule means to have the Guild's elite assassins after you. At the end of the series, >!The Monarch is tested to become level 10, the highest level, by killing his arch-nemesis: Rusty Venture; he refuses since arching Rusty is his reason to live, and also because he is told that his right hand man, Number 21, is to become a villain on his own after he levels up, so Monarch says that he can't arch alone, and neither of them would want to do it without their best friend.!<
• Payday crew: The bank robbers that form the "Clown Gang" are resourceful and extremely violent, they either try to heist with stealth or full-on lethal force, facing seemingly endless waves of police or private mercenaries, but killing civilians is prohibited and scolded by Bain, their main handler, as he sees murdering innocents to be unprofessional and messy. Not harming hostages also allows Bain to negociate the liberation of the heisters if they get arrested, so they are an asset.
• Mike and Nightwave (Fallen Aces): The private investigator Mike Thane is cornerd into a conspiracy by the mafia in Switchblade City. The vigilante NIghtwave teams up with Mike to uncover the reason for recent attacks by the mob to the mayor, and former leader of the hero group "The Aces". On the second to last mission of the first available chapter, Nightwave send Mike to investigate the mayor's mansion, but now being a crime scene, Mike is instructed to not kill people on that place to not contaminate the scene (which is just a narrative excuse to challenge the player, this game can be played any way you'd like and you don't fail the mission if you kill goons, you'd just disappoint Nightwave).

They always follow a friend group or family that behaves like middle aged urban archetypes of people who grew up watching f.r.i.e.n.d.s. and South Park.

More often than not, the only thing they talk about is sex and literal shit (because of course that's everything animals do, I guess). There's an attempt at generating comedy out of putting animals into a mundane human situation like therapy or marriage and getting a joke out of animal behaviour, but it's so damn overdone, unfunny and mediocre. The most annoying part is how it seems to be mandatory to show a take of the anus of one of the animals, is that a barely diguised author fetish?

But the fact that the plots are so average, normal and human makes me wonder why use animals and pets as characters in the first place. Why is a dog feeling like a stuck adult who got out of college five years ago? And then the answer hits: shock value. Since things like cleaning animal feces and animal castration are grotesque but not taboo, themes like that would be exploited to attract the attention of viewers with not much difficulty.

There's no more depth in creating these pieces other than seeing how edgy they can be, and it does't go further than swearing, smut and sometimes gore. They are supposed to be aimed at an adult audience, but only an edgy teenager or a youtube reviewer could endure these.

The animation and character designs are always so ugly too, everytime it's the same Rick and Morty/Family Guy eyes, the only exceptions I can think of are Fixed and Mating Season (but it's because it was made by the Big Mouth studio... yay). At least in the trailer for Breaking Bear there were fairly well donde sequences and *cartoony* movements, but it's the same edgy jokes and bland parodies of better shows.

I thought trashy comedies about animals was becoming a recent trend, but the fact that even as far back as 2004 there were attempts at creating the next Family Guy but with animals in "Father of the Pride" has let me with a sense of dread. The same jokes about sex, marriage, social situations and even race stuff that most comedies use as premises for single episodes, over and over again; unoriginality. It's not impossible to make an animated comedy with animals that's funny or even thought provoking, just look at Duckman, but of course asking for competence and talent is too much.

To end this, I'd like to recommend Zerocalcare's shows on netflix, they're actually good adult comedies and amazing character studies with a lovable cast, funny jokes and greatly emotional moments. There are currently 3 and they are all worth watching: "Strappare lungo i bordi", "Questo mondo non mi renderà cattivo" and "Due Spicci".